Musician from Vancouver Island goes viral with banana-cutting TikTok

A Nanaimo man went to L.A. to pursue a music career, and along the way, he’s managed to hit it big by cutting up a banana.

Arthur Fabbro, stage name Loveclub, created a viral TikTok video this month that shows him cutting a banana with a spoon, set to soft jazz music. It’s garnered 2.2 million views at last count and lifted him from 1,000 followers to nearly 40,000.

The 27-year-old said he’s been “blown away” by the response to the TikTok, as he’s been featured on BuzzFeed and in the U.K. tabloid the Daily Mail.

“I’d posted music stuff on there before and it didn’t really do much, because I think it’s just super over-saturated,” he said.

But after impressing a friend with a mango-cutting technique, Fabbro decided to post his first instructional video late last month, demonstrating how his mom cuts mangoes.

“I put it up and it did way better than any other video I had, pretty solid [numbers] and I’m like, man, that’s not even my good trick,” Fabbro said. “That one did decent and then the banana one went crazy.”

He had about 30 followers before the fruit-cutting started, jumped to 1,000 after the mango video and he’s now at 39,700.

He said he thinks people like the banana video because it’s “pretty personal,” though BuzzFeed adds that it’s “kinda sexy” and doesn’t blame TikTok users for “sliding straight into Arthur’s DMs.”

Fabbro said it seems that some of his fruit-cutting audience is also checking out some of his music. He moved to Los Angeles about four years ago to see where his music could take him and he writes and produces “soft and romantic” alt-pop.

“The quarantine time’s pretty good. I’m starting to figure out how I want to play live because I do want to start playing shows within the year, if we open society back up,” he said. “I’ve just been focusing on actually making the music as my main goal at the moment.”

Fabbro has been keeping up with creating TikTok content, too, posting videos that show him cutting a kiwi and an apple, but isn’t taking it too seriously.

“It’s pretty funny and it seems it’s what people like, so I may as well keep doing those if people like them,” he said. “I need to start learning some new tricks though … The good thing is there’s so many fruits.”